Said Alexandra Leenen, quoted in "What happened when my banker husband became a woman: inside our trans marriage/When Sarah Simoni fell in love with Harold Leenen, he had a high-flying career in the macho world of corporate banking – and a secret. Eight years later, Harold is now Alexandra" (London Times).
“My best clothes are the ones she buys for me,” says Sarah. “She always bought clothes for me right from the start of our relationship and definitely improved my style.”...
There are issues that still hurt: issues of sex, identity and the navigation of a relationship they prize above all things. Sarah, who has always retained her maiden name, will not refer to Alexandra as her “wife”.
“That would make me a lesbian and I’m not a lesbian,” she says. “I am a heterosexual woman.” They share a bed but no longer have sex.
When Alexandra first began to transition, initially with hormone therapy, in 2014, “three things happened”, says Sarah. “His pheromone smell changed, he began to develop breasts and I went into perimenopause, which floored my sex drive.”
Alexandra remains attracted to women. Before they travelled to Thailand together in November, when she underwent two operations to remove her genitals and create a vagina, they knew they would have to face the reality that other sexual partners could become part of their world.
“As long as no one falls in love,” says Sarah. She looks sad. Part of her still mourns the loss of the man. “He had such a beautiful penis,” she says abruptly. They both laugh at her outburst.
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64 comments:
Just one look at Alexandra and it should be obvious why trans women shouldn't be allowed to compete in athletic events with cis women.
We are our own worst enemies.
“They both laughed at her outburst.”
Ha. Hah.
Trans is socially acceptable homophobia. Change my mind.
Fellini writ large.
“ Change my mind.”
Surgically?
a large tortoiseshell cat, Henry
Is this their attempt at wit? Almost all torties are female.
This trans thing is old hat in Omaha. My son’s female high school French teacher was married to a poli sci college professor named Wally. Wally switched sexes and it was prominently featured in the local newspaper and in People magazine. The People photo shoot was in black and white. One picture showed them sitting on their marital bed. This was 2005.
Why would a man, WANT to become a terrible looking woman?
{Note:I'm NOT asking: Why would a man, want to become a woman}
As 'dysphoric' as you are with your present body, you're GOING to be MORE unhappy with your ugly circus freak body. Apparently, you HATE your body So Much, that You want to ruin it.
I'm Guessing that you Hate your body, because as Christopher B said...
You're a F*cking Homophobe
A mentally ill man is tormenting his wife. This is abuse, pure and simple.
Sorry, folks. It is a mental disease. That is a man who thinks he is a woman.
This is a sad story. Sarah seems totally psychologically (and probably financially) dependent on the Alexandra. Alexandra tells her what to wear, married her even though he had "a secret", put her through this ordeal, now plans to drag strange women (prostitues?) into her life and their bed...it's all about Alexandra.
Maybe I got the wrong idea. I didn't read the whole thing. When I clicked through, the picture of them at the top of the piece was too depressing. The lighting is harsh and everything in it, including the two of them, looks dingy and worn out like an old motel room. It was so depressing I just clicked away.
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"
Once in a lifetime...
Maybe It all started in the garden of eden when the first surgery, the one that made a woman out of a man, was done.
We could use a Jordan Peterson interpretation of that story.
What if we are awakening something in us? If memory serves don’t we have bunch of extra dna in our body, science has no idea what it does?
Keep asking questions.
Shaved his legs and then he was a she…
“Banker’s Blood!”
Guys, nothing wrong with getting in touch with your feminine side. Write poetry. Learn to crochet. Collect porcelain. But it doesn't mean that you are a woman or have to try to turn yourself into one.
Wally became Meredith and is now emeritus.
"a large tortoiseshell cat, Henry"/"Is this their attempt at wit? Almost all torties are female."
Maybe these days, people develop ideas about how their pet identifies genderwise.
"This is a sad story. Sarah seems totally psychologically (and probably financially) dependent on the Alexandra."
There's that key phrase in the headline: "he had a high-flying career in the macho world of corporate banking." Alexandra had all the power, and Alexandra got so much of what Alexandra wanted. Alexandra got maximum gender expression and Sarah sacrificed not just sexual activity but, as she tells it, all sexuality. She lies there in bed with Alexandra, with a mind and body that might somewhere, in some way, want sex, but living within the accommodation she created, that she no longer feels any sexuality, because her spouse created new "pheromones," and this chemical aroma switched off everything sexual that had been alive in her. She needs to believe all that, at age 49, because love is true and you give everything to your marital relationship. What did Alexandra give her?
"Alexandra tells her what to wear, married her even though he had "a secret", put her through this ordeal, now plans to drag strange women (prostitues?) into her life and their bed...it's all about Alexandra."
With a promise never to love those other women. If this is about women — Alexandra's need for self-expression within womanhood — where is the humanity of all those other women?
"Maybe I got the wrong idea. I didn't read the whole thing. When I clicked through, the picture of them at the top of the piece was too depressing. The lighting is harsh and everything in it, including the two of them, looks dingy and worn out like an old motel room. It was so depressing I just clicked away."
All of the pictures are very sad. I can't help thinking the photographer meant to do that — some sort of Diane Arbus form of visual opinion. And yet this article poses as if it is boosting the transgender movement.
But Sarah chose to marry her high-powered corporate banker.
Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay
Men are pigs, even when they become women.
Two flawed individuals who have squandered their good fortune. Problems that "don't amount to a hill of beans in this world". may their genes die with them.
Why is Alexandra credited with knowing what "woman" is, when we see what it is doing to Sarah? I don't know why this story is presented in the London Times unless it is meant to *undercut* the transgender movement.
But Sarah chose to marry her high-powered corporate banker.
Well, at least she didn't marry a starving artist with a secret.
Did the article say if they had kids? I hope so, but I'm guessing not.
Never trust the English newspapers. They are amusing, and sometimes their stories are even true. The real differences with US newspapers are that the English ones are amusing and once in a while their stories are true.
someone? please tell me, again; how gender dysphorics AREN'T mentally ill? Tell me how, they are Wonderful people, that are just Wonderful?
Another reminder of why I stopped visiting Althouse blog. Find it hard to tear myself away from the enlightened commentariate.
That seems like a story where everyone got what they wanted, but with some tradeoffs.
Harold/Alexandra wanted his circle to be outraged by his degeneracy, but they easily accepted his cross-dressing. With no resistance, he pushed the line to hormones and genital reconstruction. Still, everyone accepts it as he looks like a large man dressed as a drag queen. The article mentions that other sexual partners will be the next step.
It was very decent to inform Sarah of this prior to getting married. She consented, and know lives in a big house in Kent along with her parents, sister and her kids. Sarah doesn't have much of a sex drive, so the other sexual partners aren't coming for her. Sarah lives with her lesbian friend, but she is free to draw her own lines.
The parents, sister and her kids are safely and comfortably out of Cape Town, and all they have to do is adapt.
It's a mercy that Sarah and Harold/Alexandra didn't have children, so everybody wins.
Becoming a trans woman seems like the ultimate power move, both within the marriage and within his corporate hierarchy. A man dragging prostitutes into the marriage bed is just being a pig. But for a trans-woman? Its empowering!
Express yourself as you please, but it won’t change the hand (or the rights) with which you were born. And don’t be a d!ck. Sarah could do much, much better….
Since there were a couple of songs referenced above, may I add:
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Well, I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said "Dear boy, I'm gonna make you a man"
Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Ann Althouse said...If this is about women — Alexandra's need for self-expression within womanhood — where is the humanity of all those other women?
I couldn’t help laughing when I read that he got the surgery just before a trip to Thailand. Of course he did. What a tragedy for Sarah; she married an abusive narcissistic monster.
Correction. He didn't "become a woman." He's just pretending.
If Alexandra is a woman, I guess she's gay, but if Alexandra is still Harold, then he's straight. Trans isn't homosexuality. It's is a whole new level, or dimension, or generation.
I blame the parents. Every Harold wishes he could change his name and probably his identity as well.
It's a mercy that Sarah and Harold/Alexandra didn't have children, so everybody wins.
Sarah didn't win. At least Sarah would have gotten a return on her massive investment if she'd had kids, but I'm guessing Alexandra assumed that role too.
I just can't comprehend how a man could think that he's going to have his penis turned inside out into his body, his testicles removed, and he's going to have a satisfactory sex life after all that, with women other than his wife. Seriously, folks, surgeons aren't that good. Nerves aren't that forgiving, the body's not that adaptable. And women who might be attracted to this freakish person (or paid to fake it) likely aren't going to be nearly as attractive as the woman he married. The only explanation for that big a screw-up is mental illness. Sorry, but that's what it is.
Of course, he's a consenting adult, so all that's on him. It's when adults foist this "affirming" approach to gender dysphoria on minors that it makes my blood boil.
Wouldn't it just be better to add the tag '#Mental Illness'? Not only gender dysphoria, but narcissistic personality disorder, the screaming need to get approval from the squares?
It's become the kind of sad story you don't have to read to know what the outcome is going to be. What did you learn from it? Why do we, as a society, need to devote ourselves to the dysfunctions of a very small subset that is laying claim to our attention?
Is this really covered by “for better or worse”? Sarah appears to be married to an adulterous lesbian now. Time to bail, keep the house and half the marital nest egg, at the very least.
What happened when my banker husband became a woman...
Is the old expression, "And you can take that to the bank," now transphobic?
But Sarah chose to marry her high-powered corporate banker."
Sarah married a man. She is no longer married to a man. Time for her to move on if she wants true marital happiness.
Alexandra pretends she is a woman.
Sarah pretends she is in a marriage.
This is a tragedy for the gay community, and most don't even realize it. The silence of the TERFs is ominous.
All must be transgender.
Find it hard to tear myself away from the enlightened commentariate.
Do you hear anyone condemning Alexandra/Harold for being trans? Anyone denying that A/H's feelings are "authentic" - that, are actually felt? What I'm reading is a general sense, which was until very recently borne out in psychological circles, that gender dysphoria is a mental condition requiring compassion but not denial of reality, and a sense that A/H may also be a narcissist, based on what s/he is putting Sarah through.
Is either of these positions disqualifying in terms of people's "enlightenment"? Or is "enlightenment" now a euphemism for "complete suspension of rational judgment and disbelief in the name of not hurting someone's feelings"? Because when I married the absolute wrong man at 21 over the cautious warnings of my family and friends, I too was convinced that there was nothing wrong with him - it was everyone else being mean that was the problem. I was "enlightened," apparently.
Of course it turned out that there was plenty wrong with him. Luckily I got out after only two years, and now I can afford to feel compassion and pity for him rather than being trapped in his twisted world. (No. He was not trans. His issues were different.)
I may have solved the heart mystery.
After a previous tranny post Meade said "if that person is a woman now, I'll eat your hat"
After 5 minutes of arguing with Ann, meade decided it would be easier to eat the hat.
After he showed he was serious with the first bite, Ann realized she was going to lose a perfectly nice hat and made him stop.
That's the last time made will ever use that expression.
Meanwhile let's all support LGBTQ
No, not that way, though you can of you wish. As in let's get Biden to quit. But not before kamala
John LGBTQBNY Henry
I don't understand why these women stay. Think many men would stay with a wife who decided to become a dude?
This is clearly a case of domestic abuse by a spouse. Harold / Alexandra is controlling Sarah to where Sarah can’t break away from her husband (at the time when they were married, he was a husband and that is the term I use, especially with Sarah being heterosexual). I had seen this type of a spouse controlling situation in my sister’s marriage and it took her years to break away from her husband and divorced him. Sarah has been essentially reduced to a hostage in her marriage to a selfish spouse like my sister had been. Hopefully, Sarah will be able to break away from this awful relationship, get a divorce, and get financial security from her ex in the divorce settlement so that she can resume a fulfilling life and find a man who will treat her with respect as a woman. I really, really despise people like Harold / Alexandra.
Someone is confused here;
"when she underwent two operations to remove her genitals and create a vagina, they knew they would have to face the reality that other sexual partners could become part of their world."
Doesn't that make it clear that the "other sexual partners" will be male? You think he had his dick turned inside out so he could have sex with women?
I have to go with Howard on this one.
He's right about her figure. She's a good-looking woman for 49.
She should divorce the son-of-a-bitch and take half. Then she can buy a real man.
Sarah is a cutie. Alexandra looks like a dude wearing a nightgown.
Not going to fool anyone...
'Trans is socially acceptable homophobia. Change my mind.'
Trans is socially acceptable misogyny.
Fixed it.
Why doesn’t Sarah leave?
My ha hah was not for a funny. B/c it’s not…
Today is #DetransAwarenessDay
https://twitter.com/hashtag/DetransAwarenessDay?src=hashtag_click
The testimonials at Twitter make for informative reading, including how HATED people who have detransitioned are by the trans activists.
They might be the most despised, with the gender critical people next, e.g. so called trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). Traditional and religious people are getting pushed further and further down the hate list.
It isn't well known now, but a LOT of young girls were quickly and easily given testosterone and female hormone suppressants, together with "top surgery," after learning from the culture they were in to hate their female bodies. Now, by their own telling it nearly ruined their lives. But they are trying to recover.
Spotcheck Billy got down on his hands and knees
And he said, “hey, mama, hey let me check yer oil, all right?
And she said, “No, no, honey… not tonight.”
I guess the topic of his feminine preferences were not fully explored during their courtship.
Transgender conversion therapy. Human sacrificial rites. Diversity [dogma], inequity, and exclusion. One step forward, two steps backward.
I get the feeling that Harold married Sarah under false pretenses. At the time, he probably knew that he would eventually become a she. Who's to say if Sarah suspected that would happen before they got married or not. It does appear that what happened to her, because of Harold's transition to Alexandra, had some very negative effects on her that she couldn't have foreseen. But she married him knowing that he was a control freak who would force her to do things that she wouldn't normally have done. On some level, she must still want that in her life. After all, she could have left him/her at any time.
This article should be required reading by all young people who want hormone therapy and are considering transitioning. Full disclosure of what the future holds in store for them.
"The Feminine Mistake"
Apologies to Betty Friedan
The plight of people in an ordinary cis-marriage in which one transitions and one doesn't is a real one, and one I've brought up here many times before. Sarah, though, is the first woman I've seen state the real problem: that she isn't a lesbian, but a straight woman. That her spouse is now "female" doesn't automatically turn her into anything but what she already is -- except of course that while she's still a straight woman, she's now attached by marriage to someone she wouldn't so much as have considered dating at all. Other "partners" to follow, naturally. Wanna bet they're all on one side?
It is unreasonable for anyone to ask/demand that another person change her sexual orientation to one the other partner prefers. It's cruel and abusive on its face, and coupled with other stuff here (like redesigning "his/her" "wife's" wardrobe and the like), it's more so. Nobody ever should have to put up with this, period.
'I guess the topic of his feminine preferences were not fully explored during their courtship.'
Can you imagine dating today?
So, Mr. X from Tinder with whom I'm having a first date: 'Do you ever plan on cutting off your dick in the near or distant future? Would you ever contemplate sharing a wardrobe?'
Every day, I think this trans fad will start to lose steam and we can return to some semblance of normalcy.
And every day I'm proven wrong.
Leave out the transgender part, which no one dares to criticize in today's world, and you see a wife who is being manipulated and abused by a narcissist who gets his way and expects her to deny her own needs and desires.
For examples of such manipulation, checko out Dr Ramani's youtube channel and the comments.
Michelle - you are right that nobody should have to put up with such things.
Next time I am the DMV, or at the local McDonald's, I will point out to you, if you want, a few of the tens of millions of people in this country who put up with the spouses they have.
Because people have hard lives, and part of that is most people don't really have many choices when it comes to who will marry them.
God bless you, but this world is not a kind place. Some people have charmed lives but most people are stuck in their place. I mean, just look around you here. How many of the male commenters here would you want to be married to? You haven't even seen the pictures of most of them, and you must know in your heart that the answer is almost none. That is what real life is like. That tall man who told his wife he is gonna be a woman - and who followed through on that plan, even though he is repulsively ugly to look upon as a phony woman - was not someone you would want to marry, I get it, and you would be right. Your life would not be a charmed life with a man like that as a husband. But don't get too upset about it. If you have not suffered with a terrible spouse, thank God.
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